Sound Transit Route 535 travels inbound from Lynnwood City Center station to downtown Bellevue, primarily via I-405. This express service stops at Alderwood Mall and in Bothell and Totem Lake.
Route 535 runs every 30 minutes during the week, every hour on Saturdays, and does not run on Sunday. In October 2025, Route 535 had 1,908 average weekday boardings.
Average Ridership Per Trip
The plots below show the average weekday ridership by stop in each direction, color-coded by time of day. For a more detailed breakdown of how the plots are set up, please refer to the How to Read the Plots section of the article discussing Route 70.
Route 535 offers essential express service connecting communities along the north half of I-405. Some observations:
- Ridership at Lynnwood City Center station surprisingly asymmetrical. Each morning, mid-day, and afternoon trip departing the station has about 10 passengers on board. Only return trips in the afternoon have a similar passenger count. This discrepancy is also reflected in the total daily ridership for the stop. 294 passengers board inboound trips, while just 146 alight outbound trips. Passengers can transfer here to Link 1 Line and 2 Line, Swift Orange Line, Community Transit routes 102, 103, 112, 114, 117, 120, 130, 166, 201, 202, 901, 903, 904, 905, and Sound Transit routes 512, 513, 515.
- The two stops near Alderwood Mall have some ridership, almost entirely from Eastside passengers. Trips between Lynnwood City Center and the mall are better served by the more frequent Orange Line.
- The 298 space Canyon Park P&R has moderate ridership all day. Inbound boardings are highest mid-day (about 6 passengers per trip) and outbound trips drop off 5-8 passengers in the mid-day, afternoon, and evening. Passengers can connect here to ST Route 532 and Community Transit routes 106, 120, 121, and Swift Green Line.
- Route 535 detours from I-405 to serve UW Bothell and Cascadia College. The ridership pattern at this stop is similar in both directions. More passsengers alight Route 535 in the morning and mid-day, and board trips in the mid-day and afternoon. This pattern makes sense, as many students, faculty, and staff commute to the schools. About an equal number of people travel to the colleges from either direction on Route 535. The UW Bothell & Cascadia College stop also allows transfers to Community Transit routes 106, 120, and 121, Metro routes 230, 239, 372, and Sound Transit route 522.
- The stops at Bothell P&R and Brickyard Freeway station have similar, commuter oriented ridership. Most passengers board inbound trips in the morning and alight outbound trips in the afternoon. The Bothell P&R stop is a short walk from downtown Bothell. Metro routes 239, 372, and Sound Transit Route 522 stop near the Bothell P&R. Brickyard Freeway station is also served by Metro routes 231, 239, and 256.
- Ridership at Totem Lake Freeway Station is a bit more even throughout the day. Inbound trips are busiest in the morning and mid-day, while outbound trips are busiest in the afternoon. The freeway stop is walking distance to The Village at Totem Lake, a mixed-use development with over 60 stores and 800 apartments. This stop allows quick transfers to Metro routes 225, 239, 255, 256, Sound Transit Route 535, and Community Transit Route 424.
- Bellevue Transit Center is the route’s main stop in Bellevue. Over 15 passengers alight each inbound trip all day, and over 25 passengers board each afternoon outbound trip. Many destinations are within walking distance of the transit center. Passengers can also transfer between Route 535 and Metro routes 226, 240, 249, 250, 271, B Line and Sound Transit routes 532, 550, 556, 560, 566, and the 2 Line.
Daily Totals per Stop
Looking Ahead
Route 535 will be replaced by the Stride S2 Line in 2029. The overall routing for the S2 Line will be similar to Route 535, but a few of the stops will change. The S2 Line will have a stop in Kirkland at a new inline station on NE 85th St. The new line will skip the Bothell detour in favor stopping at the new Bothell/Woodinville Transit Center. Passengers will be able to transfer to the S3 Line at the transit center. In Lynnwood, the S2 Line will stay on the highway until Lynnwood City Center station, dropping the stops near Alderwood Mall.
The Stride route will bring a significant improvement to the route’s frequency, running every 10-15 minutes everyday.
Appendix: Route 532
Sound Transit Route 532 is a peak-only route between Bellevue and Everett. The ridership patterns for routes 532 and 535 are similar. In October 2025, Route 532 had 934 average weekday boardings.
At 405/160th, what was the final resolution for the pedestrian bridge. Is it going all the way across 405, or just connecting the median bus stop to the park and ride to the west, and nothing else?
A full bridge not only connects the bus to the neighborhood much better, it also fills a critical gap in the Tilt Pipeline Trail, and could be justified purely from a parks&trails perspective, even without the transit.
Driving down 405, I can see they took down a section of the concrete wall on both sides where the new bridge would go, which leaves me optimistic that they are going to do this right, and not cheap out.
Tolt Pipeline Trail?
I looked into taking the 535 recently, and realized that after the Bothell and Alderwood Mall detours, the Bellevue TC – Lynnwood TC travel time is identical to the 2 Line.
Given that, I’d be very interested in seeing just how much ridership was lost after the cross-lake connection opened.
Unfortunately, ST has stopped updating the performance tracker (https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/ridership). They had some sort of data integrity problem that they haven’t been able to fix yet. The last ridership numbers for the 535 were back in December (before East Link went across the lake). So it may be a while before we find out.
The January and February Link ridership data has been corrected but they’ve been slow with the updates since. ST Express has ridership through March (including Route 535), but April’s data isn’t online yet.
I’ve never ridden the 535, so I didn’t know it served Alderwood Mall. I’m not sure if it always has.
I remember catching it at Alderwood Mall in summer 2012, so at least since then.
Who is gonna operate Stride? Right now, First Transit (via CT) is covering the 510/30’s.
One nice thing about the ST express routes is that we have easily accessible data from the past. This is the page for the 535: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2020-service-implementation-plan.pdf#page=114. It looks similar. I think the biggest difference is a drop-off in ridership from Brickyard. Other than that, ridership is down just a little bit across the board although I think it is up a bit at Totem Lake.
The 532 is way down across the board. There are fewer trips, so that probably had an impact.
It will be interesting to see how the Stride line impacts the 532. I assume that ST will keep it but have it serve the same stops as Stride (east of Lynnwood). Someone in Ash Way then has a choice:
1) Take one of the many buses that head to Lynnwood and then transfer to the Stride bus.
2) Continue to take the 532.
Depending on the time of day, I could see the first option increasing in popularity. Right now it is basically a desperation move, since the 535 isn’t very frequent. But that will change. Commuters tend to time their trips (especially in the morning) so the impact may be minimal. We may also see an imbalance, with people timing the 532 in the morning and then leaving work whenever they feel like. This means catching the first bus heading to Snohomish County which most likely will be Stride.
For Everett it is a bit different. There are multiple buses to Lynnwood but both detour to Ash Way. Thus the trip from Everett to Lynnwood isn’t particularly fast (to be fair, the 532 also serves Ash Way). But from Ash Way it seems like Lynnwood is just a quick hop. That isn’t the case with Everett.
Option 1 seems like a long detour, likely not worth it unless it’s a 20+ minute wait for the 532. Of course, anyone traveling outside of peak hours has no choice but to endure this detour.
Everett to Bellevue is such a long distance I’m not sure it will keep the 532. It’s not a major market or one with high political visibility like Everett to downtown Seattle. And if Stride succeeds in shaving 10-20 minutes off the travel time as some estimates have suggested, that might make ST not have cold feet about eliminating it.